Reckless Disregard

by Robert Rotstein

  “I’ll fix it with Judge Mitchell once he’s calmed down,” I say. “I’m sure he’ll take you back.”

  “I already spoke with Mitchell,” Philip says. “There’s no fixing it.”

  “What gave you the right?” I say.

  “Let’s talk in private,” he says.

  “There’s nothing to talk about. You overstepped your bounds, Philip.”

  “In private, Parker.” He says this with a soft voice that carries great authority. Brenda skulks out of the room.

  Philip makes sure that the door is completely shut. “Years ago, Deanna and I had a six-week bench trial in front of Walker Mitchell. He and I both worship at St. Paul’s.”

  “So what?”

  “I talked to Walker because I was the only hope of saving Brenda’s job. You can’t do it. It’s not just the lawsuit and the cosplayers hanging around. William Bishop threatened never to send any Parapet business to JADS so long as you were working there.”

  “Whatever they think of me, Brenda doesn’t deserve to lose her job,” I say.

  “The process server is threatening to sue JADS, claiming that Brenda started it. She was probationary. Mitchell doesn’t want the headache. He’s a cold-hearted man.”

  Only then do I notice some legal documents strewn all over the desk. “What’s this?”

  “A motion from our opponents. They’re trying to disqualify you on the grounds that you have a conflict of interest. You allegedly represented William Bishop in 1999.”

  “I started at the firm that year and never worked for Bishop.”

  “Apparently you did. The hearing is in six weeks. Luckily, the court’s docket is full, so we have some time to think about how to oppose it.”

  “Six weeks is nothing.”

  We’re quiet, except for the sound of Philip’s labored breathing. “I’ve got things to do,” he says. “And not here.”

  As soon as he leaves, I phone Walker Mitchell at JADS, who refuses to take my call and instead e-mails me a formal notice of termination. Then I sit down with Brenda at a back table, order us both coffee drinks, and offer to give her a fifty percent raise if she’ll stay and work with me on Poniard’s case. After all, she lost her job because of me. Without hesitation or false pride, she agrees. Good. I know she desperately needs an income. And I need her help.

  I e-mail Poniard about Frantz’s motion to disqualify me and get a terse reply saying, “Fight it.”

  I take a closer look at the motion to disqualify. Supposedly, in 1999, during my first month at Macklin & Cherry, I represented Bishop in a libel action. Bishop had been arrested for driving a stolen Porsche 911 with phony plates. Except the car wasn’t stolen; it had been used in a movie, and Bishop was testing it out to see if he wanted to buy it. The trouble was that the props department had failed to remove the mocked-up license plates used for the film. So not only was Bishop wrongly arrested, but one of the tabloids had reported that he was a car thief. I apparently wrote a research memo analyzing whether he could sue the tabloid for libel. Now Frantz and Diamond are using that antiquated memo to claim that I have a conflict of interest, that back in 1999 I obtained confidential information about Bishop’s reputation that I could use against him today.

  I don’t remember any of this. It was just a memo, and while Bishop was on the rise, he wasn’t the colossus that he is today. But under the law, that might not matter. If my 1999 lawsuit was substantially related to Bishop v. Poniard—whatever substantially related means—I’ll be booted off the case. And I don’t want to be off the case. Not with Lovely Diamond on the other side.

  I read through the document one more time, trying to jog my memory. As it turns out, Lou Frantz and Lovely Diamond got one thing right—the memo does contain information that might help Poniard’s case.

  I set out early on the two-hour drive to Palm Desert, a community eleven miles east of the more famous Palm Springs and heavily populated by retirees. It’s Saturday, so the traffic is light. I’ve arranged a meeting with Harrison (“Harry”) Cherry, Harmon’s father and a former entertainment attorney himself. More accurately, I’ve arranged the meeting through his wife Sonja, who set two conditions before she agreed to let Harry see me. She has good reasons. He’s suffering from Alzheimer’s Disease, a tragedy all the more poignant because he’s always had an incisive mind. Sonja told me that he was at a manageable stage one up until a month ago, but in the past four weeks he’s declined. So, I promise not to say anything that could even hint that Harmon is dead—any reference to the loss makes Harry agitated and more confused. And when she says the interview is over, it’s over.

  The Cherrys live in a retirement community bordering a golf course. The large Mediterranean-style homes all look the same and are all gray and yellow stucco with a white enamel trim. The SoCal deserts spike into the high nineties even during November, and though I’m dressed in jeans and a light cotton shirt, by the time I get to the Cherrys’ front door, my shirt is mottled with sweat.

  The housekeeper escorts me to the backyard, a lush area with artificial waterfalls and rock gardens and queen palms lining the adobe paths. Harry and Sonja are sitting at a patio table drinking iced tea from tall glasses. Sonja Glanz Cherry, Harry Cherry’s third wife, stands up. She’s a brunette whose body is a kind of postmodern collaboration between a minimalist personal trainer and a conceptualist breast implant doctor. I know exactly how old she is—fifty-three, a quarter of a century younger than her husband. You’d think that Harmon would’ve disliked and mistrusted her, but he’d say that anyone who makes his father happy makes him happy, and the rest is just froth.

  She leans in as if to give me an air kiss and whispers, “It’s one of his good days. So far.” She puts her hand on his shoulder. “Harrison, you remember Parker Stern? He works for your son Harmon.”

  And so the director has yelled action, and I’m to play my part without a minute’s rehearsal—which doesn’t stop me from shuddering when she refers to Harmon in the present tense. I pretend that I’m a kid actor again, taking an improv workshop in which I have to roll with the oddest cues thrown my way.

  “How are you, kid?” Harry says.

  I’d be worried that he didn’t use my name, except that Harry has always had two ways of addressing the males in the firm, depending on their age—kid and old-timer. He always remembered the women’s names, though. He’s dressed in tan slacks and a vanilla golf shirt. There’s a large wet spot on the shirt, maybe iced tea but maybe drool. He’s tall, much taller than Harmon was, with cottony silver hair and a crooked grin. During my first two years at Macklin & Cherry, he worked there too, as an of counsel, an honorific that allowed him to come into the office a couple of times a week and service his few remaining clients. He had Harmon’s brilliant mind without the ambition, and some said that Harry was the better person for it.

  “Pour the kid a cold drink, Sonja,” he says. “Hot as hell out here.” She leans forward, but before she can reach the pitcher he grabs it away, fills my glass, and refills his own, liquid sloshing all over the table. Sonja calmly takes a napkin and wipes up the spill.

  “What brings you all the way from Beverly Hills?” he asks. I haven’t worked in Beverly Hills since the law firm broke up three years ago.

  “If it’s OK I’d like to ask you some things about William Bishop.”

  “Of course it’s OK, kid. He’s suing you, if I’m not mistaken. What did you do to him?”

  “Parker is the lawyer for the defendant,” Sonja says.

  “Yes, of course. I’ve read about your case. The video game designer. Tough adversary, Billy Bishop. Double whammy that he’s represented by Lou Frantz, that son of a bitch.” He hesitates. “Did you go to law school with Frantz?”

  “Parker wasn’t born then, Harrison,” Sonja says.

  He looks at me with the ingenuous eyes of a tiny child who has no inkling that he knows nothing about life. Then he looks away. “Of course. What do you want to know about Billy Bishop?”

 
; I retrieve my copy of the old memorandum and turn to the last page. Although the memo is confidential, Harry is allowed see it because he helped write it. Like most callow attorneys, when I wrote the memo I focused not on the factual details but on the more fascinating legal theory. I concluded that the tabloid had an absolute right to report fairly and accurately on the arrest. There were attachments to the memo, none of which I prepared. They include a list of court cases in which Bishop had been a party (breach of contract, intellectual property, and labor disputes), a summary of newspaper clippings about his philanthropic activities, and most importantly, a list of movie projects that he was involved in. The initials in the document’s footer show that Harry Cherry prepared the list of movie projects.

  Like the archived movie database page that Brenda found early on, Harry’s list of projects shows that Bishop acted in a film called The Boatman. He has a specific date—1979. Brenda can’t find a copy of the movie. No VHS tape, much less a DVD. She found nothing on eBay or at websites specializing in rare and hard-to-find videos. None of the film preservation museums has a celluloid copy of the movie.

  “Harry, you prepared this list of Bishop’s movies,” I say, sliding the page toward him. “There’s one entry called The Boatman that says that Bishop was an actor. What can you tell me about that movie?”

  He leans forward and stares at the list. I smell the sharp, spicy scent of cologne, and though I don’t detect anything else, I have the feeling that the cologne has been applied generously to mask a fetid odor. I take a shallow breath through my mouth, waiting for him to say something.

  Harry checks his watch and stands up.

  “What is it, Harrison?” Sonja says.

  “Golf with Ralph and Carl and Jeff . . . no, Pete. We’re teeing off in five minutes.”

  “You don’t have a tee time today,” she says.

  “I don’t have a . . . ?”

  She reaches over and takes his hand. “Sit down, Harrison. We’ve scheduled this talk with Parker from Harmon’s firm. It won’t take long, will it, Parker?” The last is delivered in a tone as precise as a scalpel.

  “Not long at all,” I say. “I’m wondering about the movie that Bishop acted in.”

  “Ohhh?” The word is a glissando into a falsetto, a cross between a question and a moan. It’s a welcome utterance, because it’s always been a signal that Harry Cherry is about to launch into an anecdote about someone famous who floundered.

  “The Boatman is the first movie that Billy Bishop ever produced,” he says. “Starred in it with Hildy Gish.”

  “Who?”

  “Directed and wrote it too, believe it or not. Invested his father’s money. You know his father?”

  “Howard Bishop,” I say. “The music lawyer.”

  “Billy pissed his father’s money away,” Harry says. “Low budget, shot in a matter of weeks. A modern-day version of the Orpheus and Eurydice myth. You know the story?”

  I’m about to remind him that Harmon often used the myth as a parable to teach his associates the value of trusting our superiors but fortunately stop myself. Harmon learned it from his father. “I think I studied it in college,” I say. “Orpheus is a great musician. His beautiful wife Eurydice gets bitten by a poisonous snake and dies. He travels to the underworld, hoping to bring her back. The gods of the underworld are so enamored of his music that they agree to let him lead Eurydice back to the world of the living. But on the journey home, Orpheus must not look back at his wife. Of course, he looks back.”

  Harry nods and smiles a surprisingly lucid smile. “Very good. The Boatman was a modern take on that myth. Anyway, when Papa Howard got wind of it, he pulled the plug.” He squints his eyes, as if trying to remember. “Film had lots of problems, but the biggest was that Bishop admired Andy Warhol, tried to make it look like the sex and drugs were real, that the actors weren’t professionals but a bunch of freaks. Billy wasn’t a professional actor, but he was pretty good, actually. Have to be a good actor to accomplish what he’s accomplished, producing blockbuster movies, the Oscar nominations, and then switching gears entirely and becoming the head of a worldwide conglomerate, you know, the guy doesn’t just own a studio and a television network, but twenty-seven newspapers, a record company, and a fucking English Premier League soccer team. And that’s only . . . almost owned the Dodgers until the commissioner put the kibosh on it. You got to be able to fool a lot of people to acquire all those things. Oh, Billy Bishop is definitely a good actor.” He huffs for breath, folds his hands on the table, and stares at me as though he’s about to continue talking. I wait ten, fifteen, thirty seconds.

  “How did the father manage to shut The Boatman down?” I finally ask.

  “Oh, well, Howard . . .” And then a gaping stare with a gaping mouth.

  “What about Howard?” I say.

  He doesn’t answer. He closes his mouth and makes a humming sound. He takes a few audible breaths and shouts, “Felicity McGrath was on that picture!”

  Given Harry’s condition, I should stay calm, should show no reaction, but my excitement gets the better of me, and I begin to blather. “So Felicity really did know Bishop? Because if you could testify to that, we could—”

  Sonja’s virulent scowl jolts me into silence.

  He leans in close, and his hooded eyes narrow. “Don’t tell anyone, kid. No one’s supposed to know but Harmon and me. If Howard and Billy find out that I told you, they’ll . . .” He stiffens and looks down at his hands, and then looks to each side as if he’s being watched. “Wasn’t supposed to tell. I shouldn’t have told.” He looks at Sonja like a contrite third grader and says, “Am I in trouble?”

  “Of course you’re not in trouble, baby,” she says.

  He smiles and pats her hand. “You’re a good girl, Sonja.”

  I don’t want to upset him further, but I’m so close. Just a little more information. “Harry, tell me more about The Boatman. Where can I get a copy? And who’s Hildy . . . Hildy Gish?”

  His eyes recede in fear, and he shakes his head. “Billy will be pissed. He said not to tell. Harmon . . .” With his index finger he draws a happy face in the condensation on the outside of his iced-tea glass. Then, using the same finger to cover the top of his straw, he pulls the straw out of the glass and dribbles tea across the table in swirls. Sonja grabs his wrist and confiscates the straw. Harry sticks his finger into the tea puddles and draws more curlicues. He alternately looks at Sonja and then at me, turning his head back and forth in a Ping-Pong rhythm.

  “Scavi,” he hisses.

  “I don’t understand,” I say.

  He lowers his head and won’t look up.

  “Harry?” I say.

  No response.

  I appeal to Sonja. She shakes her head, not in answer but in reproach. Harry snuffles, the tears welling up in his eyes. Within seconds, he’s sobbing, the desolate, snorting cry of the decrepit. Sonja reaches out and caresses his back.

  “It’s OK, sweetie,” she says. “Everything’s OK. I’m here, Harrison.”

  He slides over and buries his face in her shoulder. She looks at me and shakes her head.

  I stand up, not sure whether to say good-bye, not sure what a good-bye will mean to a man with no memory. It’s like attending a funeral, where the object of the ceremony is inevitably absent, oblivious, irretrievable. But there’s a difference. Now, the shell of the man isn’t lying in a casket but is breathing, moving, uttering sounds, emitting odors. And though he’s just as irretrievable as the dead, no dreams of an afterlife can soften the observer’s horror.

  “Thank you both for your time,” I say. “It’s good seeing you.”

  Harrison lifts his head from his wife’s shoulder and smiles sadly. “Harmon liked you, Parker. You were his favorite. I miss him. I miss my son.” And then the ever-diminishing light in his eyes dims, and he returns to what I realize is a blissful insensibility to the pain that long life inevitably brings.

  Philip pokes at the sizzling roast beef with
tongs. “Parker, I want you to know that not many people know how to grill tri-tip properly, especially on an open barbecue. I use a simple dry garlic rub, some kosher salt, finely ground pepper, and cook it over the cooler parts of the grill away from the flame. The fat flare-ups give it enough flavor.”

  Though it’s early November, he’s taking advantage of the heat caused by the Santa Ana winds. “It’s why I moved to Southern California,” he says. “To escape the Chicago winters. Backyard cooking and golf year-round.” Fortunately, he’s wearing a baseball cap—he’s a Cubs fan—because otherwise the sweat from his brow would be dripping onto the meat.

  As he works, I tell him about this morning’s meeting with Harry Cherry. He merely nods his head and hums like a country doctor examining a patient until I get to the part where Harry used the word scavi.

  “The scavi are the tombs in the necropolis beneath St. Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican,” he says. “I spent a year away curating a Vatican collection and got to know them well. If you ever go to Rome, you must visit. But you have to reserve months in advance.”

  I know about the Vatican’s scavi because I looked the word up on my iPhone as soon as I left the Cherrys’ house yesterday.

  “Harry couldn’t have meant the necropolis,” I say. “If he meant anything. His thoughts are all tangled up.”

  Philip’s wife Joyce pokes her head out the backdoor. She wears her straight gray hair in a short chili-bowl cut, and the jowls on her round face confirm that unlike so many LA women her age, she’s never had cosmetic surgery. She actually could pass for a retired nun. She’s plump and is usually all smiles, though not today.

  “We’re ready to eat when you are,” she says. “Come inside.”

  “We’re eating outside,” he says.

  “No, we are not,” she says. “It’s too cold.”

  “It was eighty-four degrees a little while ago.”

  “The sun’s about to go down, and the temperature’s already starting to dip. I’ve set us up in the kitchen.” I’m grateful to her—the San Fernando Valley gets cold at night this time of year no matter what the daytime temperature. My long-sleeve soccer jersey kept me too warm for the afternoon, but now a cool breeze is knifing right through it.